Living a Slowly Life – Slow Down and Do Less, Slowly

We live today in the most hectic and feverish world. For the most of us each day seems to be a race; a daily race or “rat race”, an exhausting daily routine that leaves you no time for rest and relaxation. What is alarming is that the speed of this race increase from day to day, we become a sort of “speedaholics”. And as if this wouldn’t be enough we borrowed from the PC world the concept of multitasking (running two or more tasks at the same time) and try to implement it in our daily life. We want to do more because, in this era of consumerism, almost all of us are conditioned to want/have more. Rarely we take into account to be more, to think and feel better rather than do and have.

Slow down when all around you are speeding up! But why slow down when I have so many things to do? So many possible unborn projects and so many unfinished things! Why slow down when all around us hurry up for the big prize: the result. Answer: because not the result is the key but the process. It matter less what I get at the finish and more how I feel on the way there. Being always in a hurry doesn’t make any good to our body as well as to our mind. Our body needs to find its own pace to work at easy and our mind need time to taste all wonderful things around us.

Keep a state of calm, whatever the cost may be! Many of us have learned to live in a state of agitation and anxiety. They think this state help them to keep the pace with the rapid change of modern times. But this is a trap; it will lead you finally to exhaustion. In hurry times we need a calm mind to manage agitation around us. Nietzsche wonderfully described this kind of people: “they live as if they are missing something”.

So all we have to do in speedy times is to preserve a state of calm, even if the cost may seem very big. This is a trap too; the real cost come when you lose this state of calm.

If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing slowly! There are so many things that ask for our attention, effort and energy, that we have to be very very selective with our projects. Before spending our time and energy on any project that come in our way, we need a drastic evaluation of its worthiness. If something isn’t essential for our life we must get rid of it immediately and if something can make a great difference in your life just take action. But don’t act in a hurry, because all things worth doing are worth doing slowly. Only doing things slowly we have the possibility to enjoy the process of doing in itself, and so to enjoy life.

If you can slow down when all around you are speeding up, then you’re one of us. Be proud that you are one of us and not one of them. For they are fast, and we are slow. There are those that would urge us to speed. We resist!

We shall not flag or fail. We shall slow down in the office, and on the roads. We shall slow down with growing confidence when all those around us are in a shrill state of hyperactivity (signifying nothing). We shall defend our state of calm, whatever the cost may be. We shall slow down in the fields and in the streets, we shall slow down in the hills, we shall never surrender!

Why? Because if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing slowly. Some are born to slowness – others have it thrust upon them. And still others know that lying in bed with a morning cup of tea is the supreme state for mankind.